


Unit 17

by Largay



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Death, EMS, F/F, Lapis gets it, Other, Peridot is on the spectrum, ambulance, lapidot - Freeform, life of an EMT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 23:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18839380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Largay/pseuds/Largay
Summary: Peridot dealing with her first death working in an ambulance. Lapis is there to help.TWs I guess for someone dying.





	Unit 17

The world is often filled with what we like to think is normalcy. A certain repetition. A pattern by nature's design.

 

Life and death.

 

Love and birth.

 

Peace and war.

 

One always precedes the other. Like the rise of the sun and moon or the push and pull of steady ocean waves. There is always order in even the most chaotic of circumstance.

 

That's what Peridot always told herself. From very young, her curious and oddly wired brain always sought out the sequence of things. It grounded her to know firmly that there was always a reason for the good or bad that would happen. Always a tipping point to look back at. It certainly helped in her studies to be a good patient care giver.

 

But today there wasn't any amount of figuring or calculating that could calm the storm in her head.

 

There in the back of her ambulance was a dead man. The first patient to die in her care in the short time she had been a medic.

 

And she just stared. Waiting for the inevitable rise and fall of their chest. They were going to take a breath. They had to take a breath. They had stopped moving so suddenly and without warning that there was no way..

 

They stayed still.

 

Taking a deep steadying breath herself, hands chilled with a new sensation as they gripped the stretcher, she said with surprising firmness:

 

“Sir? Can you hear me?”

 

…

 

No response

 

She reached over with a gloved hand, index and middle finger extended, and pressed into the carotid artery in his neck. No pulse.

“Sir, if you can hear me I need you to open your eyes.”

 

…

 

Nothing

 

In a last attempt to get a response, she reached out hand fisted, and rubbed harshly into his chest with her knuckles, a technique learned when she first learned cpr, over a year ago to gauge awareness.

 

But still.. No response.

 

With any other patient, she would have rushed to begin cpr. Call out to her partner for the day in the front cab, Lapis, to help with his breaths. Begin to fight to bring them back from the brink.

 

She new every step by heart. The sequence and pattern a comfort to recite in her head.

 

_Call for fire rescue.._

_Administer two breaths for every thirty compressions.._

_Prepare the AED to administer a shock.._

_Clear the patient.._

_Shock.._

_Begin compressions again until advised.._

 

But..

 

This was an old man.

 

An old man with a clean neat piece of yellow paper in his file reading in big bold letters, that Peridot had gone over not even 10 minutes ago:

 

**“DO NOT RESUSCITATE”**

 

A completely valid DNR form. Up to date and with two valid signatures.

 

So Peridot slowly pulled her hands away, her eyes never leaving the mans slacken face.

 

She knew Lapis was waiting for her to give the go ahead to begin driving away, but she just continued to stare for a moment. The last time she had seen someone dead, it had been her grandmother in a casket. Peridot had been sad then, even cried a little when everyone else began to cry too.

 

However now, with this man she did not know, she felt nothing for him. She tried to conjure up some feeling of sadness as she stared, but the feeling never came. Just a pang of guilt for not having what she thought should have been a normal reaction to this strangers death.

 

She mused to herself that her disconnect from normal human emotion also made her an ideal medic.

 

After another moment she called out to her more seasoned and experienced partner, finally tearing her eyes away from the man, to look through the cabs window.

 

“Hey, Lapis?”

 

She saw Lapis’ eyes shoot to the rear view mirror to look back at her. Whatever her partner saw in her, it must have been alarming. Her brown eyes frowned and quickly disappeared from view. The sound of a car door opening and shutting echoed through her ears and just as suddenly the cab was filled with afternoon sunlight.

 

There her partner was with her pretty blue highlights and tired eyes, backlit with what was a beautiful day, bringing with her the sound of the outside world. Children laughing in the distance, birds chirping and the whisper of wind rustling the trees over head.

 

A world completely oblivious to the loss of life in the back of an old ambulance.

 

Lapis stared for a moment and then hopped in closing the doors behind her, shutting out the ignorant world with it. She sidestepped awkwardly and sat on the bench with Peridot. She took a second to look at the patient, before donning gloves and side eyeing her younger partner. She reached out to examine the patient as Peridot had, taking the same steps, to gauge awareness and life. She added in a forceful pressure with long fingers between the clavicle and shoulder for good measure with the same results.

 

She sighed and sat up, “DNR?”

 

Peridot reached behind the stretcher and pulled out the thick file with his medical history the man was being transported along with a few of his things. He was supposed to be going home for in home hospice care. They had just picked him up from his old nursing home. He was supposed to have at least a couple more good days in him to be with his family in the end. He wasn't supposed to die here.

 

Not with a stranger.

 

The file slipped from her hand as they began to tremble. She went to pick up the now scattered paper from the floor as she muttered in a small but steady voice,

 

“Sorry. Yes he has one.”

 

Lapis did not respond right away. She waited for Peridot to organize the papers and slide them neatly back in the manilla folder. She let her line up the pages perfectly after taking out the DNR form and handing it to her. Lapis checked the date and signatures and nodded her head, passing it back. Not looking at Peridot she reached for the radio and brought it close to her face, pressing the trigger to speak in it.

 

“Dispatch, this is unit 17. Be advised patient has expired prior to going en route and has a working DNR. Over.” She released the trigger and waited. After fifteen seconds they responded, “Copy unit 17. Sit tight while we get in contact with the family and get PD on scene. Over.” Lapis lifted the mike back to her face holding the trigger, “Copy dispatch. Over.”

 

With that she hooked the mike back in place and sat back to look Peridot straight on.

Lapis had been her partner on and off again for a few months now. Working together for long twelve, sometimes twenty-four hour shifts, you get to know someone, and Lapis knew Peridot.

 

She was an oddball. Some days she was quiet for hours at a time, lost somewhere in her head or in a book. Lapis didn’t mind those quiet moments as much as some of their other coworkers did. She’d heard all the talk that went on behind Peridots back at the station. People complaining that the silence made things awkward or that she seemed stuck up and like she knew more than everyone else. She knew that wasn't true though. In many ways she suspected that Peridot did not speak for the same reason she did not.

 

Why fill the silence with empty words to be polite after all?

 

But then other times you couldn't stop the deluge of words that poured out of her when she discovered something new she liked, like some new disease she learned about at school that day before her shift or maybe something from a medical journal she’d been reading. In those days Lapis would nod along while she drove, always hiding the little smile that only the eccentricities of Peridot could elicit, with that awkward bright smile and hand gestures.

 

Right now however, she wasn't the usual quiet. She also wasn't asking questions about protocol like shed usually do when encountering a new problem. No she just stared intently at the O2 tank that was still hissing with air being supplied to the man who no longer needed it.

 

With a still gloved hand, Lapis reached over and turned the valve shut, and then drew the sheet that had been keeping him warm just a minute ago over his head.  

 

She sighed again, taking off her gloves and throwing them to the side. She took one more look at her small yet capable partner and put an arm around her shoulder, drawing her into her side. Peridot froze and made to pull away, but Lapis just tightened her grip and softly said,

 

“Its okay.”

 

That’s all it took to break the flood gates, as Peridot desperately clung at her partners work shirt and cried into her shoulder. All Lapis could do was wrap both arms around her, and rub Peridot's back soothingly.

 

It will be okay.

  
  


_The first time is never easy_

 

_Nor is the second_

 

_Third, fourth and fifth_

 

_We just learn to pretend we’re fine-_

**Author's Note:**

> -What Peridot did with her knuckles is called a sternum rub
> 
> -Hospice is end of life care
> 
> -Lapis is a Paramedic and Peridot is an EMT


End file.
